Cryptocurrency Arbitrage

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Bitcoin Priced in Gold

We can remove the dollar and various models from the price equation, and just look at Bitcoin priced in another scarce asset: grams of gold.

Charles Vollum’s chart suggests a more than 10x increase in the years ahead if it bounces back to the top end of its historical range, which would imply a six figure dollar price (like PlanB’s model) if gold remains relatively static in dollar terms. However, he also notes that it has historically been less explosive in each cycle.

My analysis starts by noticing the relative heights and timings of the highs in mid-2011, late-2013 and late 2017. The second peak is about 48 times higher than the first, while the third peak is about 17x the second. So the rate of growth in the peaks seems to be slowing.

-Charles Vollum

If the next Bitcoin-priced-in-gold peak is 5x higher than the previous peak, as a random example that continues the diminishing pattern, that would be well into the six figures in dollar terms, assuming gold holds its value over the next few years. After the mania period with this model, it could drop back down into the five figure dollar price range for a while until the next cycle. This is all speculative, but worthy of note for folks that notice patterns.

Volatility Reduction Over Time

Charles Vollum also noticed the decline in volatility over Bitcoin’s existence, again as priced in gold (but it also applies roughly to dollars):

Next, notice the distance between the red and green lines for any given date. In 2011, the upper bound was about 84x the lower bound. A year later, the ratio was 47x. By 2015 it was 22x, and at the start of 2020 it had fallen to 12x. This is a good thing, demonstrating a decline in overall peak-to-trough volatility. If this pattern holds up, the ratio will be about 9x in mid 2024, and about 6.5x by the end of the decade. Still high by forex and bond standards, but less than 10% of the 2011 volatility!

-Charles Vollum

Since Bitcoin started from a tiny base and grew into a meaningful size, in my view its volatility has been a feature, rather than a bug. In some years, it has been down over 80%, while in other years, it has gone up over 1,000%. This feature makes it speculative for most people, rather than having a reputation as a reliable store of value that gold enjoys, since it’s relatively uncommon for gold to have a double-digit percent drawdown year, let alone a double-digit percent drawdown day like Bitcoin sometimes has.

If, over the next 5+ years, Bitcoin’s market capitalization becomes larger and more widely-held, its notable volatility can decrease, like a small-cap growth company emerging into a large-cap blue-chip company.

In the meantime, Bitcoin’s volatility can be managed by using appropriate position sizes relative to an investor’s level of knowledge and conviction in the asset, and relative to their personal financial situation and specific investment goals.

Bitcoin’s volatility is not for the feint of heart, but then again, a 2% portfolio position in something is rarely worth losing sleep over even if it gets cut in half, and yet can still provide meaningful returns if it goes up, say, 3-5x or more.

Intentional Design

Whether it ultimately succeeds or fails, Bitcoin is a beautifully-constructed protocol. Genius is apparent in its design to most people who study it in depth, in terms of the way it blends math, computer science, cyber security, monetary economics, and game theory.

Rather than just a fixed set of coins released to the public, or a fixed perpetual rate of new supply, or any other possible permutation that Satoshi could have designed, this is the specific method he chose to initiate, which is now self-perpetuating. Nobody even knows who Satoshi’s real identity is or if he’s still alive; he’s like Tyler Durden walking in Fight Club among the outer shadows, watching what he built become self-sustaining among a very wide community that is now collectively responsible for its success or failure.

The regular halving events consistently reduce the flow of new coins, meaning that as long as there is a persistent user-base that likes to hold a lot of the existing coins, even if the annual new interest in Bitcoin from new buyers remains just constant (rather than growing), Bitcoin’s price is likely to rise in value over the course of a halving cycle. This in turns attracts more attention, and entices new buyers during the cycle.

The thought put into its architecture likely played a strong role for why Bitcoin reached relatively wide adoption and achieved a twelve-figure market capitalization, rather than come and go as a novel thing that a few cypherpunk programmers found fascinating. For it to fail, Bitcoin’s user-base would need to stagnate, go sideways, and ultimately go down in a sustained fashion for quite a while. Its death has been prematurely described or greatly exaggerated on many occasions, and yet here it is, chugging along and still growing, over 11 years into its existence, most likely thanks in part to the halving cycles in addition to its first-mover advantage that helped it build the most computational security.

In other words, in addition to solving the challenging technical problems associated with digital scarcity and creating the first cryptocurrency, Satoshi also chose a smart set of timing and quantity numbers (out of a nearly infinite set that he could have chosen from, if not carefully thought out) to maximize the incentive structure and game theory associated with his new protocol. Or, he was brilliantly lucky with his choices.

There are arguments for how it can change, like competitor protocols that use proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work to verify transactions, or the adoption of encryption improvements to make it more quantum-resilient, but ultimately the network effect and price action will dictate which cryptocurrencies win out. So far, that’s Bitcoin. It’s not nearly the fastest cryptocurrency, it’s not nearly the most energy-efficient cryptocurrency, and it’s not the most feature-heavy cryptocurrency, but it’s the most secure and the most trusted cryptocurrency with the widest network effect and first-mover advantage.

How Bitcoin behaves over the next two years, compared to its performance after previous halvings, is a pretty big test for its third halving and fourth overall cycle. We’ll see if it stalls here and breaks down vs the historical pattern, or keeps pushing higher and wider as it has in the previous three cycles.

I don’t have the answer, but my base outlook is bullish, with several catalysts in its favor and no firm catalyst as to why this cycle should be different than the prior cycles in terms of general direction and shape, even if I wouldn’t really try to guess the magnitude.

Reason 3) An Ideal Macro Backdrop
In Satoshi’s genesis block for Bitcoin that initiated the blockchain, he put in a news headline from that week:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

-Bitcoin Genesis Block

Bitcoin was conceived and launched during 2008 and 2009; the heart of the global financial crisis, with widespread bank failure, large government bailouts, and international adoption of quantitative easing as a policy tool by central banks. His protocol was an attempt to store and transmit value in a way that was both verifiable and scarce, like a digital gold in contrast to the idea of bailouts and money-printing.

That crisis took years to play out. U.S. deficits were elevated for over 5 years, and quantitative easing didn’t end until late 2014. Europe experienced a delayed sovereign debt crisis in 2012. That whole financial crisis was a process, rather than an event.

Over a decade later, we have an even larger crisis on our hands, with larger bailouts, bigger quantitative easing, and direct cash handouts to companies and consumers which are paid for by central bank deficit monetization.

The U.S. federal government is set to run a deficit somewhere in the ballpark of 20% of GDP this year, depending on the size of their next fiscal injection, which is by far the largest deficit since World War II. And most of this deficit is being monetized by the Federal Reserve, by creating money to buy Treasuries from primary dealers and elsewhere on the secondary market, to ensure that this explosive supply of Treasuries does not overwhelm actual demand.

The dichotomy between quantitative easing that central banks around the world are doing, and the quantitative tightening that Bitcoin just experienced with its third halving, makes for a great snapshot of the difference between scarcity or the lack thereof. Dollars, euro, yen, and other fiat currencies are in limitless abundance and their supply is growing quickly, while things like gold and silver and Bitcoin are inherently scarce.

This is an era of near-zero interest rates, even negative nominal interest rates in some cases, and vast money-printing. Key interest rates and sovereign bond yields throughout the developed world are below their central banks’ inflation targets. The fast creation of currency has demonstrably found its way into asset prices. Stock prices, bond prices, gold prices, and real estate prices, have all been pushed up over the past 25 years.

Even a 1% spillover into Bitcoin from the tens of trillions’ worth of zero-yielding bonds and cash assets, if it were to occur, would be far larger than Bitcoin’s entire current market capitalization.

I have several articles describing the money-printing and currency devaluation that is likely to occur throughout the 2020’s decade:

The Subtle Risks of Treasury Bonds
“Fixing” the Debt Problem
QE, MMT, and Inflation/Deflation: A Primer
Why This is Unlike the Great Depression
In early May 2020, Paul Tudor Jones became publicly bullish and went long Bitcoin, describing it as a hedge against money-printing and inflation. He drew comparisons between Bitcoin in the 2020’s and gold in the early 1970’s.

Smaller hedge funds have already been dabbling in Bitcoin, and Tudor Jones may be the largest investor to date to get into it. There are now firms that have services directed at getting institutional investors on board with Bitcoin, whether they be hedge funds, pensions, family offices, or RIA Firms, by providing them the enterprise-grade security and execution they need, in an asset class that has historically been focused mainly on retail adoption. Even an asset manager as large as Fidelity now has a group dedicated to providing institutional cryptocurrency solutions.

And speaking of retail, the onboarding platforms for Bitcoin are getting easier to use. When I first looked at Bitcoin in 2011, and then again in 2017, and then again in early 2020, it was like a new era each time in terms of the usability and depth of the surrounding ecosystem.

Some major businesses are already on board, apart from the ones that grew from crypto-origins like Coinbase. Square’s (SQ) Cash App enables the purchase of Bitcoin, for example. Robinhood, which has enjoyed an influx of millions of new users this year, has built-in cryptocurrency trading, making an easy transition for Robinhood users if they happen to shift bullishness from stocks to cryptos. Paypal/Venmo (PYPL) might roll it out one day as well.

So, if Bitcoin’s halving cycle, or the fiscal/monetary policy backdrop, lead to bull market in Bitcoin within the next couple years, there are plenty of access points for retail and institutional investors to chase that momentum, potentially leading to the same explosive price outcome that the previous three halving cycles had. Again, I’m not saying that’s a certainty, because ultimately it comes down to how much demand there is, but I certainly think it’s a significant possibility.

Final Thoughts
At the current time, I view Bitcoin as an asymmetric bet for a small part of a diversified portfolio, based on a) Bitcoin’s demonstrated network effect and security, b) where we are in Bitcoin’s programmed halving cycle, and c) the unusual macro backdrop that favors Bitcoin as a potential hedge.

If a few percentage points of a portfolio are allocated to it, there is a limited risk of loss. If Bitcoin’s price gets cut in half or somehow loses its value entirely over the next two years, and this fourth cycle fails to launch and totally breaks down and completely diverges from the three previous launch/halving cycles, then the bet for this period will have been a dud. On the other hand, it’s not out of the question for Bitcoin to triple, quadruple, or have a potential moonshot price action from current levels over that period if it plays out anything remotely like the previous three launch/halving cycles.

What will happen in this cycle? I don’t know. But the more I study the way the protocol works, and by observing the ecosystem around it over the years, I am increasingly bullish on it as a calculated speculation with a two-year viewpoint for now, and potentially for much longer than that.

Additional Note: Ways to Buy Bitcoin

Some people have asked me what I think the best places to buy Bitcoin are, so I’m adding this last section.

Plenty of people have strong feelings about where to buy it or what companies they want to do business with; ultimately it comes down to your country of residence, how much you want to buy, how hands-on you want to be with it, and whether you want to accumulate it or trade it. There are trade-offs for convenience, security, and fees for various choices.

Exchanges like Kraken and Binance and Coinbase are popular entry points for people into buying some Bitcoin, especially if they want to trade it. Do your homework, and find one that meets your criteria that operates in your jurisdiction.

I think Swan Bitcoin is great for accumulating Bitcoin, especially if you want to dollar-cost average into it, and I use it myself. I have a referral code as well: folks that sign up at swanbitcoin.com/alden/ can earn $10 in free Bitcoin if they start accumulating through that platform. It can be stored for free with their custodian, or automatically transferred to your wallet. For many people, this is the method I would personally recommend checking out.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is a publicly-traded trust that holds Bitcoin, and is therefore a hands-off method that can be purchased through an existing brokerage account. It has some disadvantages, like relatively high fees, a tendency to trade for a sizable premium over NAV, and centralized custody, but it’s one of the few options available for investors if they want to hold a small allocation to Bitcoin within a tax-advantaged account.

Ultimately, it comes down individual needs. In general, if you want to minimize fees and maximize security for a large Bitcoin purchase, then maintaining your own Bitcoin wallet and private keys is the rock-solid way to go, but has a learning curve. If you want to just buy a bit and maintain some exposure and maybe trade it a bit, some of the exchanges are a good way to get into it. For folks that want to have some long-term exposure to it through dollar-cost averaging, Swan Bitcoin is a great place to start.